By OSA AMADI

Although they may not be aware of it, every black person who pretends to be white is of all persons most miserable. It does not matter whether that person owns the whole universe as his wealth and property, or whether he is a professor in a million academic disciplines. The worst thing one can do against oneself is to deny one’s identity and  pretend to be what one is not.

Ngugi-wa-Thiongo

Michael Jackson attained the peak of fame and wealth. But the evil he did to his identity went down  in history and one can safely say that Michael was one of the most miserable persons in the world before he died.  In his old age, his nose which he had reconstructed through cosmetic surgery to look like that of a white man crumbled.

Michael’s case, lamentable as it was, may be a bit pardonable given the environment in which he grew up. At least it could be said that every other thing about him – culture, language, and environment – was white. The only thing that made him black was the blood that flowed in his veins, which he did everything to flush out and replace with white blood but could not. Subsequently, he settled for a permanent ‘whitewashing’ of his skin and surgical reconstruction of his nose, lips and eyes, all in an effort to look like a white man which everyone, including himself, knew he was not. What a caricature he made of himself! What a shame he brought to his race.!

Now, what about those Africans who grew up in Africa, breathed African air, ate African food but decided to repudiate themselves through the repudiation of everything African? Having uprooted themselves thus from their roots, those miserable folks try to replant their personalities in the European and American construct. They talk like Americans, eat like Americans, dress like Americans, visit America, but they are not Americans.

Neither are they Africans, for they have denied their African nature and culture. They cannot be Americans or Europeans, simply because they are not. So what, or  who are they? At best they are rootless people, and at worst, a psychological and socio-cultural caricature.

Bob Marley was a mega star. His father was white, but Marley, who could have legitimately laid claim to being white, chose to be black. And what a graceful black man he was, and still is. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, one of the best writers Africa ever produced, used to be James Ngugi, a name given to him as a baby by his parents. When he grew up and realised who  he was he decided to remove ‘James’ from his name.

Perhaps there  is no African who believed more  in black indentity and lived it like Fela Anikulapo Kuti. He used to be Fela Ramsome Kuti, but when the consciousness took hold of him, he plucked the pretence – Ramsome – out of his name.

In Germany, during the days of Adolf Hitler, a Jew was inside a passenger aircraft and the Gestapo, Hitler’s secret policemen, came into the aircraft to round up all Jews to be sent to be executed. They knew all the Jews in the aircraft and they fished all of them out except one whom they did not know was a Jew.

As Hitler’s men were leaving the aircraft with the Jews they had taken, the unidentified Jew stood up and called out to the Gestapo: “Sir!” The Gestapo stopped and turned back.  “I myself am also a Jew,” he said calmly. They came back and took him away too.

That may be foolhardiness, but if a man could die in such a way for his identity, he makes another who repudiates his own identity under normal circumstances, simply contemptible